System Cpu Between 50-70% and need to find out why

[Paul]

At 04:45 PM 28/05/2007, Chris wrote:
>On 28/05/07, Paul <bsdlist at cogeco.ca> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >I will run tests on a local box but I cant be toggling the kernels on
>> >my production servers.
>> >
>> >Thanks
>> >
>> >Chris
>>
>>Hi Chris,
>>
>>So have you removed the QUOTA feature from your production boxes? I
>>am curious what you did here to get things working on the stable 6.2?
>>
>>I am amazed more people are not having an issue with this.
>>
>>Thanks
>>
>>Paul
>>
>no I use QUOTA but put up with the performance hit, all my production
>servers are dual core now and new ones will be core 2 duos so I work
>round it with raw power, also using SATA hds instead of PATA.  I dont
>use QUOTA on every single server tho, just the commercial web servers.
>
>Chris

Thanks for your reply.

That is odd as I used two Dual Core CPUS (4 in total) XEON 64 with 16 
GIG of RAM and SATA HD on the amd64 branch with a very fast Areca 
controller and the hit was so bad that the system was not usable at 
all. It was like going back to a 386 (or beyond that).

Did you provide any mail services on that server? I have a hunch it 
was the multiple instant access to many files that was causing the 
slowdown (50-100 of small file reads and writes per second). If you 
only provided FTP type access then that may not have been as big of 
an issue as you may not have had as many concurrent file writes.

Thanks

Paul